A Little Helping Hand For Those Of You Looking For Your Next Book

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214 Books!

I love reading and I love books (“No way!” I hear some of you gasp. It’s true, I love reading. This blog would never have suggested it but there you go, the truth is out). This is a special blog post that I felt I just had to write, not a book review. Although you could say this is a type of book review, as I’m going to briefly write about just how damn much I love books. Today I finished the book I was reading (The Lady of the Rivers by Phillipa Gregory- soon to be reviewed!) and was hunting through one of my five (!) bookshelves for my next read. Looking around, I suddenly realised that about ninety percent of my room is taken up by books. No, seriously. I put my cups of tea on books for lack of shelving space. I have to peep in my wardrobe in the mornings because the pile of books by the door is too big to move. I trip over, regularly, on a delicious book just sitting invitingly on the floor. Some people have piles of clothes on the chair in their room- I have books. Realising that I am, myself, about ninety percent made of book (the question ‘If I am 99kg and I devour 1kg of books a day, does that make me 1% book?’ pops to mind) I decided to count the actual number of reading materials that I own. I had to discount History Today magazines because the number of those is enough to make you stub a toe pretty hard whilst trying to get out of the bedroom door. So I counted. Five bookshelves (some proper ones, some chairs and bedside tables) down and I have 214 books. That’s not including the books I have bought on my Kindle which probably amounts to nearing 50. 214. 214!

Instead of being filled with that oh dear, that’s rather tragic feeling some people get when they realise their prize possessions are probably worth about £5 on eBay, I got this overwhelming feeling of accomplishment. I have bought, at new price or second hand (or actually at village summer fete price which, trust me, never reaches above 20p per book) 214 books. I am also incredibly happy to say that I have read about 200 of the 214 of my books. And of those 200 I must have read about 150 at least twice if not more. The few that remain unread are either newly acquired and I haven’t got round to it, or they’re Mao by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday which I promise I will eventually get around to reading (have you seen the size of it?).

The feeling I felt after accomplishment was almost excitement. I have 214 books at 21… imagine how many I might have when I double that age… or triple it… I don’t know about you but my ultimate dream is to have one of those libraries which is so big that you have a moveable ladder just to get to the high shelves. Ugh, makes me tingle just thinking about it.

I love reading, I love books and I am incredibly proud to own 214 of them.